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A water warrior is missed
Site 41 protester who died last week remembered at controversial dump site
By Mark Bonokoski
On the morning of the first day of Don Nelson’s visitation at the Lynn-Stone Funeral Home in nearby Elmvale, his picture went up at the First Nations’ encampment across from Site 41 — clothes-pinned to a line along with other notices.
“Remember our fallen warrior,” read the attached note.
It was pinned next to a professionally-produced poster of country music legend George Hamilton IV, promoting an upcoming fundraiser to keep the protest going.
But his hand-scrawled tribute stood out nonetheless, just as Don Nelson stood out.
Yesterday marked a week since Don Nelson’s passing. The 76-year-old local farmer — Snapper, to his friends — was hard to miss among the protesters who descended upon Site 41. He hauled around a portable oxygen tank to breathe, and was either sitting in his truck or a wheelchair, saddled further by a leg that had been partially amputated years ago.
He was a fixture at the camp, often sitting outside near a banner that reads, “Shoulder to shoulder.”
His absence did not go unnoticed.
Yesterday was also the 100th day since the Keepers of the Water, women from the Beausoleil First Nations, left the nearby Christian Island Reserve on Georgian Bay, and first set up camp here in a farmer’s field across the road from the burgeoning site of the controversial Simcoe County landfill — a 20-hectare dump known as Site 41 that is being cast atop a vast aquifer holding some of the purest water in the world.
“It is the duty of the water keepers to be here,” says Elizabeth Brass Elson, the Beausoleil First Nations councillor who co-conceived the idea of setting up the camp.
“I cannot believe the length that some governments will go to do something that is so horribly wrong.”
The camp — composed of teepees, tents, a cookhouse, and portable latrines — also has a ceremonial lodge, its sacred fire first lit by Christian Island elder Leon King, and kept ever-burning by young Ojibway fire keepers such as 19-year-old Jamie Mixemong, also from Beausoleil.
“Only an idiot would put a dump on top of the purest water ever created,” says Mixemong. “It’s as stupid as taking ants to a picnic, isn’t it?
“Surely there were other options. Could they not have found a wasteland to put the dump on? Could they not have found some environmental dead zone?” he asks.
“But, no, they choose pristine land, land surrounded by bread-basket crops — corn, soy bean — and a place where the natural resources are boundless.
“What they are doing here is so incredibly stupid,” he says. “And it takes no genius to know it is wrong.”
There were a number of arrests a few days back when Simcoe County officials successfully got an injunction to move out protesters barricading the gates to Site 41 — keeping out the workers who today man the earth-moving machines preparing the land for the first load of garbage scheduled to arrive this autumn, some two decades after that seemingly incredible possibility first hit the radar screen.
Native and non-native alike, almost a dozen of them, found themselves suddenly being charged with mischief and obstruction by the OPP — like ailing 82-year-old farmer Keith Wood and his wife Ina; like 39-year-old farmer’s wife Anne Nahuis; like First Nations protester Vicki Monague.
And like Elizabeth Brass Elson.
Charged with mischief and intimidation a week ago Saturday, Elson was granted bail under the condition that she come nowhere within 3 km of Site 41.
But it was not a restriction she could live with.
And so she returned.
Sitting by the dying embers of the fire that had burned overnight, Elson handed over a press release she had just sent out, including copies to the court and the OPP, beseeching them not to re-arrest her.
“I am not, by any means, trying to be defiant,” she says. “I am only asking kindly not to be arrested for something I have to do as part of my spiritual undertaking to protect what the Creator has provided.
“Please respect my wishes and my aboriginal rights.
“Disobeying laws is not normal for me, but I find this case unique,” she says. “I was called to this site like many others who now occupy the roads and the campground.
“But we all have the same intentions and the same purpose — to save our water … the purest water in the world.”
At any given time, upwards of 50 First Nations can be found at the camp and, if they are anything like 19-year-old Sara Monague, sister of arrested Vicki Monague, they will stay through the winter, no matter how harsh it is.
“And we will stay beyond that, too,” says Monague. “We will stay until they listen, and the dump is shut down.”
For young Sara Monague, a Seneca College small business student who has been at the camp all 101 days, being part of the protest is like being a part of history.
“This is historical,” she says. “First Nations people and non-native people have combined forces for a common cause.
“How often has that happened? This camp is kept going through the donations of the local people — the food, the erection of the ceremonial lodge … so many things.
“And we have made an impact,” she says. “People on the outside are now taking notice. Politicians are now taking notice. Activist groups are now taking notice.
“Two months after we arrived here, a local farmer’s wife came up to me, and she was crying,” says Monague.
“She told me we had done more in two months to bring attention what is happening here than they had accomplished in 10 years.
“Like the sign says, we are here together — ’shoulder to shoulder.’”
